Translation with Colour®: The reason behind our name

One of the things I get asked most often about Translation with Colour® is the reason behind this name (which is, by the way, a registered trademark…). “Why should translation have colour?”, “what do you mean with this?”, “are you a translator who does design?”, and others alike are the typical mind-bogging questions quizzing colleagues, visitors, and clients on the first contact either online or on meetings.

I can’t even forget the episode in Saint Petersburg, Russia, at the famous Frikadel’ki restaurant, when an Israeli lady was puzzled with what she was trying to read on my Translation with Colour® t-shirt. After tilting her head left and right it didn’t take long till she addressed me. I explained Translation with Colour®’s was my translation venture and contrary to what she thought I was not a designer (despite I had made the design).

“But why Translation with Colour®?”

There is a language called Geez (some give it as extinct), which developed in what is nowadays Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. This was the language of the Ethiopian Imperial Court and Kingdom of Aksum. This language is still used in by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church, and also the Beta Israel Jewish community.


One of the less described and known features of the Geez language is that its writing, especially what on what concerns official letters and religious writings, was ciphered or protected using colours which altered meaning of texts, offering different possibilities for understanding the true message. Only the initiated would plunge into the different layers of a given text. To make the matters more complicated Geez makes use of an alphasyllabary aka abugida (a Geez word itself) writing system based on consonants, developed for this language alone, but afterwards adopted by other languages in the region.


Now it’s clear how translation might get a colourful shade from an original text. In any case, ciphered texts are word of the day and a sign of the times we live in. In any case, languages, texts and ideas are charged in such a way with diverse and intense layers of meaning, offering no other solution than Translation with Colour®.